Design of the poster for the 9th edition of the Biennale Interieur ¹⁹⁸⁴

For 30 years graphic designer Boudewijn Delaere was responsible for the house style of the Biennale Interieur fair in Kortrijk. He re­members fondly his training from 1957 to 1960 in the Higher Institute for Decorative Arts in Brussels (today ENSAV - La Cambre). La Cambre was founded in 1926 by Henry van de Velde in the spirit of the arts and crafts school that he had headed in the German city of Weimar and out of which Bauhaus grew after the war. The Brussels design school offered Belgian students a modern alternative to the academies and Sint-Lucas schools, which emphasized the imitation of historical examples. Personal development and new techniques took centre stage at La Cambre. Delaere remembers how Lucien De Roeck involved the students in the construction of Expo 58 and how they were the first to work with the Helvetica font and with adhesive letters. But it is above all the energy of the different workshops at the school and the primordial importance of the immediacy of the message in graphic design that always stayed with him.

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Met dank aan Boudewijn Delaere en Sara De Bondt.